Exercise is important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle and individual well-being. Accordingly, many individuals want to participate in an exercise program. The most successful exercise programs may be ones tailored to a fitness level of an individual and aimed at assisting the individual to achieve one or more specific fitness or exercise goals. Information about the individual's progress toward achieving their goals may be collected using sensors for measuring various physical and/or physiological parameters associated with the individual's physical activity.
Sports trainers, as well as other exercise and fitness professionals, are available to assist individuals in developing exercise programs appropriate for their individual fitness levels and their specific fitness or exercise goals. Hiring such professionals, however, can be expensive. Furthermore, the busy schedules of many individuals make it difficult for these individuals to set aside time to meet with an exercise and fitness professional on a routine basis. Thus, many individuals forego using the services of exercise and fitness professionals, and they never achieve the benefits that can be obtained from an exercise program tailored, for example, to one's fitness level.
Technology has resulted in the development of portable fitness monitoring devices capable of providing performance feedback to the individual during a physical activity. Some of these devices are also be capable of providing music to the individual during the physical activity.
What is needed are new portable fitness monitoring systems having improved functionalities, such as the ability to utilize a portable fitness monitoring device with performance data logging, performance feedback, and/or music capabilities, thus offering the individual a variety of options while exercising.